Laszlo opens it email technology to the public
UPDATED
We got word this morning that the Laszlo Systems folks have opened their web mail service to the public. Anyone can sign up for an account and play with the snazzy interface. It's not clear to us if this is intended to be an actual consumer-facing product, or if it's just a public demo of the company's technology. The email accounts only offer 10 megs of storage, for instance, so we expect it's the latter. We've asked for clarification on that.
For those not familiar with Laszlo, the company is playing squarely in the middle of the burgeoning "rich Internet application'' space, building web-based communications tools that have that desktop application look and feel (what everyone is calling Ajax these days). Earthlink already uses its email technology, and the company is building a suite of "digital life'' applications.
UPDATE: A Laszlo spokeswoman characterizes the service as a "living laboratory.'' In other words, Laszlo is using it to solicit user feedback and to try to drive interest among Internet service providers, its main market. They're not getting into the hosted mail business. By the way, the obligatory Laszlo Mail developer blog is here.
http://www.siliconbeat.com/cgi-bin/mt331/mt-tb.cgi/863
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You might want to note that this app is not Ajax, it's Flash-based which requires a plugin (an ubiquitous plugin I admit)which means it is not truly browser-based. I can't help but also note that we have been selling a web suite of email and collab tools including Gb mailboxes, drag and drop, spell check, rich text editing, shared calendars, contacts, files, etc. for several years. With the advent of web 2.0 the west coast myopia seems to be in overdrive with non-stop stories touting 'breakthrough' SaaS technologies like this, zimbra and joyent as though they actually were the innovators. This stuff isn't new and most of these companies are incapable of hosting, supporting and scaling their technologies, all essential elements of a revenue-generating SaaS biz...
Martin on November 10, 2005 6:05 AMComment link
Sorry martin, but the laszlo isnt a provider mail . The mail account only show the technology in real use and how the new web app generation - UI, can give more control like normal applications in your desktop.
The ServerSide has worked, with serious architecture - JEE Eg. - MVC, Hibernate, Cluster strategies, failover and more ....but the demonstration show the power of Laszlo x Ajax applications.
Felipe on November 11, 2005 5:25 AMComment link
Martin. Excellent app and it looks like you support many browsers, great job. I was really looking to forward to seeing the demo, but it required the flash plug-in, so it was not truly browser based. :-)
mookie on November 14, 2005 10:12 AMComment link
